Winter might be the time for holiday caroling, but quite different sounds emerge from my body at this time of year. As the ice and snow bombard western Canada, an ordinary car ride with my spouse becomes an exercise in terror. The moment I find myself freezing in the passenger seat any unprocessed or semi-processed trauma comes zooming out of my nervous system like an army of flying monkeys. While I cannot purge trauma from my life experience, I can name it, recognize it, ove

Small slights have big consequences for us traumatized folk. Years of abuse sensitizes us to harshness and cruelty of all sorts. I was thinking about this today as a doctor’s office asked me to fill out forms using their new online system. Did I ever have cancer? Did I ever suffer from depression and anxiety? Standard stuff, but I could feel my pulse quickening, physically and emotionally. Facing an empty patient portal, I am reminded that trauma does not evaporate into thin

I would like to tear certain traumatic memories out of my brain, like old garments on fire, and stamp on them until the burning and the sensation and the repetition of burning is extinguished. But trauma doesn’t work that way. The offences I can’t forgive or forget are nestled like baby reptiles in my blood, my nerves, my bones, my flesh. Recent research suggests why defeating traumatic memories is so difficult.

Grappling with PTSD from emotional and medical trauma, I search for support groups in my community but find none. Instead I bond with characters from outer space. I have followed the character of La’an Noonien Singh on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds with interest, respect, and recognition. And La’an is not alone in being a survivor of trauma on the Enterprise. If only respect and understanding for trauma survivors arrived on Planet Earth, now, and not in a fantasy future.

I keep living into the same answer. It is the same answer because it is the same question. I give people millions of chances. I don’t start from cynicism. I make allowances for mistakes, fatigue, and frailty. And still I am disappointed. I am hurt, ignored, mistreated, or misunderstood. Time after time, I reach the same conclusion of midnight desperation: No More.

Having long been gaslighted by authority figures, I tend to gaslight myself, but I am done. Believing myself is healing, is health.

I didn’t have a PTSD episode while awaiting my colonoscopy to annoy my gastroenterologist, but annoyed he was. He is a busy, important...

A survivor of multiple cancers reflects on her relationship with panic, how PTSD has shaped her life and her character.

Not allowed to speak my thoughts or show my feelings, I was driven by my family of origin into art. More like, taken, tied, threatened,...

I have broken the family contract. My mother enforced it: we (mother and three daughters) were never to acknowledge or object to my...

I keep waiting to be tried for my crimes against humanity. What crimes, you might ask? (I ask myself as well, in constant evaluation of...

Because I was determined to live fully and deeply, I weaned myself off psychiatric drugs. The suffering was intense but worthwhile....

Having recently cut all ties with my family of origin, I have moved from anger, shock, and loss to feelings of freedom, joy, and release....

Source: Canadian Women’s Foundation https://canadianwomen.org/blog/signs-of-emotional-abuse/ According to the Canadian Department of...